Alan Malcher WW2 Resistance

Lepa Radic Yugoslav Partisan, Order of the People’s Hero

Radic was born to a Bosnian Serb family on 29 December 1925. In February 1943 she was captured during a firefight against the 7^th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prince Eugen and was tortured for several days but refused to provide the names of other partisans and was sentence to death by hanging.

After the noose was placed around her neck a German officer said he would spare her life for the names of members of her group and Radic loudly replied “I am not a traitor to my people. Those whom you are asking about will reveal themselves when they have succeeded in wiping out all the evildoers to the last man.” Lepa Radic was 17 years old when she was publicly executed on 11 February 1943.

Alan Malcher

SOE wireless operator Denise Bloch (12 January 1916- 5 February 1945)

(Image IWM)

On 2 March 1944 Denise Bloch infiltrated central France by parachute and worked as the wireless operator for both Clergyman and Detective circuits which were part of SOE’s clandestine network and began arranging for weapons, sabotage stores, finance and other agents to be sent from London and worked with several reception committees receiving incoming air drops.

It was around 8.20 am on 18 June when her wireless transmissions were located by German direction finders and her Safehouse raided by the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (Security Service of the Reichsführers-SS), or SD, and Bloch along with another agent were captured.

It is known Bloch was tortured for information, but her wireless was not used by the Germans, and it appears Bloch refused to give the SD her personal wireless codes used to confirm her identity to London. It is also known she was transported to prisons in Germany during which she suffered from exposure due to the cold and malnutrition and was eventually transported to Ravensbrûck Concentration camp where she was executed on 5 February 1945 at the age of 29 and like many agents has no known grave after her body was cremated along with many others.

Alan Malcher

SOE wireless operator Suzanne Mertzien (sometimes spelt Mertisen).

On the night of 6 April 1944 Mertizen was dropped by parachute with two other women agents (Marie-Louise Cloarec and Pierrette Louin). After landing in a field in the Limoges region of France the three women made their way to Paris.

On the night of 25 April, the women were arrested after being denounced by a collaborator and interrogated by the Gestapo. In August they were transported to Ravensbrûck concentration camp where they were shot, and their bodies incinerated sometime in 1945. Mertizen was posthumously awarded the Military Cross, Medal of the Resistance and the Chevalier of the Legion d’honour. Her name will be found on the Tempsford Memorial in Bedfordshire near former RAF Tempsford (138 Special Duty Squadron) which was responsible for parachute operation in occupied Europe. (I’m still researching the other women).

Marcel Pinte the six-year old who worked for the French Resistance

(Musee Resistance)

French Resistance. Six-year old Marcel Pinte worked for the resistance carrying secret messages to various parts of the resistance network and his father, Eugéne Pinte (aka La Gaubertie) ran a resistance cell from their remote family farm. It was later said, with his school satchel on is back he didn’t raise suspicion.
In August 1944 Marcel accompanied the Maquis to a night parachute drop of weapons and supplies and whilst waiting for the drop a member of the resistance had an accidental discharge with a Sten Gun during which Marcel was hit by several rounds and killed. He was later honoured during the Armistice Day at a ceremony in Aixe-sur-Vienne, near the city of Limoges in central France.

Polish Resistance During the Warsaw Uprising.

Róża Maria Goździewska (Eugeneniusz Lokajski)

Polish Resistance. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, 8-year-old Róża Maria Goździewska became the youngest nursing assistant with the Polish Resistance Home Front Army, after her father was killed by the Gestapo and her home burned during reprisals against the resistance. During the fighting Róża worked in a basement field hospital where she was known as Różyczka, “Little Rose.”

She survived the war and later graduated from the Silesian University of Technology and moved to France in 1958 where she married and had two children. She died in 1989 at the age of 53. (Photo Credit Eugeniusz Lokajski which is said to be rare because it shows a smiling Polish child during the war)